1984 - Theater, Film

Theater, Film

Theater: Benefactors by Michael Frayn 4/4 at London's Vaudeville Theatre, with Polly Adams, Clive Francis; The Miss Firecracker Contest by Beth Henley 5/27 at New York's off-Broadway Manhattan Theater Club, with Georgia-born actress Holly Hunter, 26, St. Louis-born actor Mark Linn-Baker, 30; The War at Home by U.S. playwright James Duff, 29, 6/13 at London's Hampstead Theatre, with David Threlfell, Frances Sternhagen; Hurlyburly by David Rabe 8/7 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Washington, D.C.-born actor William Hurt, 34, Harvey Keitel, New York-born actor Christopher Walken, 41, comedian Jerry Stiller, New York-born actress Sigourney Weaver, 34, 343 perfs.; Balm in Gilead by Lanford Wilson 9/6 at New York's off-Broadway Minetta Lane Theater, with Steven Bauer, Glenn Headley, Laurie Metcalf, 143 perfs.; Ma Rainey's Black Bottom by Pittsburgh-born playwright August Wilson (Frederick Wilson Kittel), 38, 10/11 at New York's Cort Theater, with Theresa Merritt, 61, Baltimore-born actor Charles S. Dutton, 32, 225 perfs.; The Foreigner by New Orleans-born, Chicago-raised actor-playwright Larry Shue, 38, 11/1 at New York's Astor Place Theater, with Shue, New Rochelle, N.Y.-born actor Anthony Heald, 39, 686 perfs.

Former New York Times drama critic (and foreign correspondent) Brooks Atkinson dies of pneumonia at Huntsville, Ala., January 13 at age 89 (he was at the Times for 31 years); actor Sam Jaffe dies at Beverly Hills, Calif., March 24 at age 93; actor-director-producer William Keighley at New York June 24 at age 94; playwright Lillian Hellman of a heart attack on Martha's Vineyard June 30 age 74; actor Richard Burton of a stroke at his home in Switzerland August 5 at age 58; actor Luther Adler at Kutztown, Pa., December 8 at age 81.

Television: Aspell & Co. on London Weekend Television (Saturday night talk show; to 1993); Kate & Allie 3/19 on CBS with Susan Saint James, now 37, as Kate McArdle, former Saturday Night Live co-host Jane Curtin, now 36, as Allie Lowell, two divorced mothers sharing a New York apartment (to 5/22/1989); The Jewel in the Crown 9/1 on Britain's Grenada TV; Miami Vice 9/16 on NBC with Galena, Mo.-born actor Don Johnson (Donald Wayne), 34, as police detective Sonny Crockett, Philip Michael Thomas as Rico Tubbs (to 5/21/1989); The Cosby Show 9/20 on NBC with comedian Bill Cosby, now 47, as physician Cliff Huxtable; Houston-born actress Phylicia Rashad, 36, as his wife, Clair; Los Angeles-born actress Lisa Bonet, 16, as their daughter Denise; Tempest Bledsoe, 10, as their daughter Vanessa; Malcolm-Jamal Warner, 13, as their son Theo (to 9/17/1992); Who's the Boss? 9/20 on ABC with New York-born actor Tony Danza, 33, as former ballplayer-turned-housefather Tony Micelli; Trenton, N.J.-born actress Judith Light, 36, as advertising executive Angela Bower; Dan Pintauro, 8, as her son Jonathan (to 4/25/1992); Murder, She Wrote 9/30 on CBS with Angela Lansbury, now 57, as novelist-turned crime solver Jessica Fletcher of Cabot Cove, Me. (to 5/19/1996); The Body in the Library 12/26 on BBC-1 with actress Joan Hickson as Miss Marple begins a series based on the Agatha Christie detective (to 1992).

TV producer and host Jack Barry dies of a heart attack at New York May 4 at age 66.

Films: Milos Forman's Amadeus with Wisconsin-born actor Tom Hulce, 30, as W. A. Mozart, Murray Abraham; Martin Brest's Beverly Hills Cop with Eddie Murphy; Alan Parker's Birdy with Los Angeles-born actor Matthew Modine, Nicolas Cage; Alan Rudolph's Choose Me with Canadian-born actress Genevieve Bujold, 42, Keith Carradine, Lesley Ann Warren; Claude Chabrol's Cop au Vin with Jean Poiret, Stephane Andran; Juzo Itami's The Funeral (Ososhiki); Fred Schepsi's Iceman with Timothy Hutton, Lindsay Crouse; Roland Joffe's The Killing Fields with Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor, Athol Fugard; Paul Mazursky's Moscow on the Hudson with Robin Williams, Maria Conchita Alonso; David Lean's A Passage to India with Australian actress Judy Davis, 29, Victor Banerjee, Peggy Ashcroft; Robert Altman's Secret Honor with Philip Baker Hall as Richard Nixon; Norman Jewison's A Soldier's Story with Baltimore-born actor Howard E. (Ellsworth) Rollins Jr., 33, Adolph Caesar; Martin Bell's documentary Streetwise about teenage vagrants; Bertrand Tavernier's A Sunday in the Country with Louis Ducreux; James Cameron's The Terminator with Austrian-born actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, 33; Robert Epstein's documentary The Times of Harvey Milk narrated by Harvey Fierstein; John Huston's Under the Volcano with Albert Finney, English actress Jacqueline Bisset (Jacqueline Fraser), 40; John Hanson's Wildrose with Reading, Pa.-born actress Lisa Eichhorn, 32.

Onetime child actor Jackie Coogan dies at Santa Monica, Calif., March 1 at age 69; actor William Powell at Palm Springs, Calif., March 5 at age 91 (told by New York doctors in 1950 that he would die within a year if he did not stop drinking, he quit cold); director Joseph Losey dies at his London home June 22 at age 75, having lived in Europe since being blacklisted for alleged communist associations in 1951; Dame Flora Robson dies at Brighton July 7 at age 82; James Mason after a heart attack at Lausanne July 27 at age 75; Janet Gaynor of pneumonia at Palm Springs, Calif., September 14 at age 77 (she has never fully recovered from a 1982 San Francisco traffic accident); actor Richard Basehart dies at Los Angeles September 17 at age 70 after a series of strokes; actor-director François Truffaut of cancer at at Paris October 21 at age 52; director Sam Peckinpah of a heart attack at Inglewood, Calif., December 28 at age 59.